1. The Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to providing legally recognized signatures. More specifically, the invention relates to generating signatures useful for electronic and paper documents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Signatures are often a formal requirement of various transactions. Many legal instruments, such as wills, contracts, and deeds, are not legally enforceable unless they are signed by the appropriate persons in a specified way. While the specific legal requirements relating to signatures may vary across jurisdictions, the requirement of having a signature on a document serves fundamental purposes. For instance, signatures should be indicative of the person that signed a particular document and signatures should be difficult to reproduce without authorization. Signatures should also identify what is signed such that it is difficult to alter the signed matter without being discovered. Signatures further serve to authenticate a document by identifying each person that signed the document and the act of signing a document is intended to bring the legal aspects of signing the document to the attention of the signer.
The procedures for affixing signatures to paper documents is relatively well established. In the digital realm, however, persons are more reluctant to affix an electronic signature to an electronic document for various reasons even though the characteristics of electronic signatures (such as authenticity and security) are arguably better than their paper counterparts. For example, persons place more trust in paper signatures in comparison to electronic signatures.
When an electronic signature is employed to sign a document, the signer first identifies exactly what is being signed. The document or data identified by the signer is hashed to generate a hash result that is essentially unique to the document. Then, the hash result is converted into an electronic signature using a private key of the signer to encrypt the hash result. In this manner, both the document and the private key are related to the electronic signature.
Transactions involving digitally signed documents usually require a sending party and receiving party to have the ability to digitally send and/or receive documents. This requirement may be met by both parties simply having a computer system connected to a network such as the Ubiquitous Internet and appropriate software.
Often, a party receiving a signed instrument is not equipped to receive electronically signed instruments over a digital connection such as through the Internet. For example, legal or locally mandated requirements may mandate the use of paper copies for signed instruments. One common use for signed documents is recording conveyances and deeds at a county recorder office. In one example, the county recorder may not be equipped to receive documents through a digital connection.
Nonetheless, electronic instrument generation and execution is a cost and time saving operation. As an example of uses of electronically signed instruments, reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 6,796,489, titled PROCESSING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS WITH EMBEDDED DIGITAL SIGNATURES which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. It would therefore be useful if electronically signed instruments could be implemented such that a paper copy of an instrument with a valid electronic instrument could be generated.